SILENT STRIKE: We’ve read lots about the...

SILENT STRIKE: We’ve read lots about the release Tuesday of Bruce Springsteen’s long-awaited pair of albums and Wynonna Judd’s solo debut. But there’s another album due that day that may outsell them both even though it is being released with almost no advance promotion: Def Leppard’s “Adrenalize.”

Def Leppard may not excite the media the way Springsteen and Judd do, but its last album--1987’s “Hysteria”--sold a cool 10.5 million copies worldwide, and again big numbers are expected.

The idea behind the non-campaign, according to a Mercury Records source, is to let the album speak for itself--much like U2 did late last year when the Irish group released “Achtung Baby” without doing any interviews or wide-scale promotion. The reasoning in both cases is that young rock fans often resent it when they feel a record is being over-hyped.

Besides, the record company figured there’s no need for spending a lot of money to launch the record.

“There’s huge anticipation for the album,” said Gregg Steele, program director of Long Beach hard-rock radio station KNAC-FM. “As soon as fans hear it’s out they’ll run out to buy it. This is the most talked about and widely anticipated (hard rock) record so far this year.”

Retailers agree.

“This is no ordinary record,” confirmed Bob Bell, vice president of the Wherehouse Entertainment chain. “This is the kind of record that will (generate) about five or six singles and will sell for 18 months--not like the average hit album that may last six months. This band has a huge, strong fan base that will help spread the word about the album over a long period of time.”

Part of the anticipation is curiosity about how the British band will deal with its most recent trauma. After seeing its last album delayed when drummer Rick Allen lost an arm in accident, Def Leppard was hit early last year by another tragedy: Guitarist Steve Clark died from respiratory failure resulting from an overdose of alcohol. The group’s surviving guitarist, Phil Collen, handled all the guitar work on the album.

A replacement for Clark will be aboard by the time Def Leppard launches its tour, which is expected to start in England in late spring before coming to the United States in the summer.